The fens in the seventh century were probably very like the forests
at the mouth of the Mississippi, or the swampy shores of the
Carolinas. Their vast plain is now, in summer, one sea of golden
corn; in winter, a black dreary fallow, cut into squares by stagnant
dykes, and broken only by unsightly pumping mills and doleful lines
of poplar-trees. Of old it was a labyrinth of black wandering
streams; broad lagoons; morasses submerged every spring-tide; vast
beds of reed and sedge and fern; vast copses of willow, alder, and
grey poplar, rooted in the floating peat, which was swallowing up
slowly, all-devouring, yet all-preserving, the forests of fir and
oak, ash and poplar, hazel and yew, which had once grown on that
low, rank soil, sinking slowly (so geologists assure us) beneath the
sea from age to age. Trees, torn down by flood and storm, floated
and lodged in rafts, damming the waters back upon the land.
Streams, bewildered in the flats, changed their channels, mingling
silt and sand with the peat moss. Nature, left to herself, ran into
wild riot and chaos more and more, till the whole fen became one
"Dismal Swamp," in which, at the time of the Norman Conquest, the
"Last of the English," like Dred in Mrs. Stowe's tale, took refuge
from their tyrants, and lived, like him, a free and joyous life
awhile.
For there are islands in the sea which have escaped the destroying
deluge of peat-moss,--outcrops of firm and fertile land, which in
the early Middle Age were so many natural parks, covered with
richest grass and stateliest trees, swarming with deer and roe, goat
and boar, as the streams around swarmed with otter and beaver, and
with fowl of every feather, and fish of every scale.
Pages:
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293